01/11/2011 | Early Warning From Chiapas : Indigenous communities across Latin America are seeking empowerment; for democracy's sake, they must have it.

Martin Edwin Andersen

The bloody rebellion by Native Americans in Chiapas, coming at the end of the United Nations' "International Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples," underscores the urgent need to address the needs of Latin America's 35 million Indians, particularly their political rights and the protection of their lands and resources.

No one should have been surprised by the uprising in Chiapas, Mexico's poorest state and the site of long-running violations against the human rights of native peoples and a virtual assault by large landowners against the small agricultural holdings that are the lifeblood of the indigenous communities. Their plight, and the failure of their government to respond, is mirrored to some degree in every Latin country with a substantial indigenous population. The greatest tragedy of Chiapas may not be the awful death toll, now estimated at more than 100 people, but that the news from Mexico may provoke copycat rebellions of frustration.

January 06, 1994|MARTIN EDWIN ANDERSEN | Martin Edwin Andersen, a member of former Sen. Cranston's professional staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is writing a book on the future of Native Americans in the 21st Century.